Not that I've been playing terribly long, but long enough for some opinions to have formed...

1) I don't have a super powerful rig by any standards, but the game looks good. Some really stunning vistas. Especially from my homestead in Falkreath. I went back from somewhere and saw a giant outside. They had never bothered me before so I went over to see if I could get him out of my garden. I tell you, the view from fifty feet up is absolutely breathtaking

2) I can't say I'm a huge fan of the 'stolen' mechanic, but it makes at least as much sense as a merchant who once had an iron broadsword stolen attacking anyone who ever offers to sell him an iron broadsword again (the Morrowind system). My choice would have been to have it 'hold' based, like the bounties, but I can live it. The one downside is I view anything that doesn't have a 'steal' over it as freely given (I've taken the food right out from people's plates and sold it to the local grocer. Does that make me a bad person?)

3) Consequences - this is the one I heard so much negative about, but so far I'm happy. I just helped out some miners in a village. When I came out of the mine, a she-orc thanked me and named me blood kin. This is after I've already slaughtered everyone in the last orc hold I've been in - but with no witnesses so no bounty (2K bounty accrued then dropped, so it wasn't a perfect job, but still...). I had to stop and think about that one. It would be nice to be trusted, however briefly, in the other holds, but in the end I reloaded and sniped the [censored] before she saw me coming out so the conversation couldn't happen. Seemed the more honest thing to do - I had a feeling killing her after the fact wouldn't change my 'blood-kin' status.

Choice is so hard for games to get right. Make a real serious choice and you're developing multiple games at the same time. Other than that, the best you can hope for is 'illusion of choice' or choices with more limited consequences. The Star Ocean series did pretty well with it. Telltale is great at the 'illusion of choice' thing. I'd rather have a lot of little choices with smaller context rather than just one or two big game changing ones, though both is best, of course

4) Skills and levelling. I do not miss managing my stats to hit multiples for the level breaks (crap, I've got to stop running until I train spears). As for weapons, I don't think I've ever played a character that regularly used more than a couple weapons anyway (other for stat management), so the streamlining there is fine with me. The talent trees perks make a nice substitute for developing your own class. Mechanically, Daggerfall is by far still my favorite in the series, but with a UI mod I can see myself perfectly happy with this (I just can't seem to change keybinding for some things, and the wrong keys display in the on-screen instructions )

Hmm... what else. I like the fast travel. Daggerfall had it, so you can't say it's something new to the series. I don't like the horse. That may be a problem with my computer though. It just feels 'clunky'. I like moving around stealthed with bow drawn. In a world where danger is literally everywhere that's the way I would travel.

I do love the engine. In fact I was excited to develop a game using it until they yanked the rug out from under the payment program (though I wasn't excited about 25%). I don't know why they didn't do what they did with Greenlight and just charge $100 up front if you want to be listed commercially. No serious developer would balk at that and it keeps most of the riff-raff out. Ah well, I got RPG maker, and I can wait to see how the new one really works for tablets.

Last thing - a question. I know it's bit of a spoiler but how important is it to the main quest that your character IS dragonborn? From an RP point of view, the character I'm playing is the one that lived through the events of Daggerfall and Morrowind (presumably Oblivion as well, but I couldn't get that to run on the computer I had and forgot about it. Still have the discs around somewhere). I loved how Morrowind handled the Nerevarine thing. Frankly, she's getting old and tired of this crap. She was coming to Skyrim to relax and a bloody war is going on. If other people want to call her Dovakin (sp?) that's fine with them, but other than what I'm sure are a few obvious scenes is it really integral to the plot and playstyle?

Come to think of it, now that they've released some of the side titles, I may start up at Arena someday and play straight through them all.

Enough ramblings - I've got more map to explore.

Edit: Just went through one of the best 'explore' locations I've seen in any game: